How many of us have them?

Lyrics

friends! if i may interrupt right quick i know y'all working, busy smoking & busy trying not to smoke, busy with the kids & moms & busy with alone, but i have just seen two boys — yes, black — on bikes — also — summer children basketball shorts & they outside shoes, wild laughing bout something i couldn't hear over my own holler, trying to steady the wheel & not hit they asses as they swerved frienddrunk, making their little loops, sun-lotioned faces screwed up with that first & cleanest love we forget to name as such, &, hear me out i'm not trying to dis lil dude, but in this gold hour he kind of looked like Francine off Arthur same monkey mouth & all, ole & i say hey looking-ass boy tho in a beautiful way, the best beautiful same as i know all of us have looked like something off when backlit by love. o loves, y'all ugly asses have crowned me the worst names: wayne brady, gay wiz khalifa, all kinds of bitches & fags (tho only with my bitches & fags), all kinds of shit &, once, mark of buddha that year acne scored my forehead with its bumpy faith. my niggas & my niggas who are not niggas i been almost-pissed myself, almost been boxin' been tears & snot off your dozen wonders been the giddy swine dancing the flame. o my many hearts, y'all booty-faced weird-ass ole mojo-jojo-looking asses dusty chambers where my living dwells roast me. name me in the old ways, your shit- talk a river i wade, howling until it takes me. i can't stop laughing, more river wades down my throat. could be drowning could be becoming the water, could be a baptism from the inside out. don't save me, i don't wanna be saved. i've died laughing before, been seen god's face & you have her teeth, my nig. but hers ain't as yellow as them saffron shits you keep stashed in your gloryfoul mouth my friend! my friends! my niggas! my wives! i got a crush on each one of your dumb faces smashing into my heart like idiot cardinals into glass but i am a big-ass glass bird, a stupid monster crashing through the window & becoming it just to make you laugh. Andrew used to say friendship is so friendship & ain't it even after Andrew gave it on over to whatever he was still my nigga. when they turned his body to dust he was still my dusty-ass boy. don't you hear it? the dust on the fan calls me a bum, says my hairline looks like it's thinking about retirement. the dust in the car says i look like a chubby slave, says i look too drunk, takes my keys, drives me home. the wind is tangled with the dust of the dead homies, carrying us over to them, giggling in the mirror. hear them. hear your long-gone girl tease your hair on the bus. hear them rolling when you sweep broom across the beaten floor. i miss them. all the dead. how young. how silly to miss what you will become. i apologize. sometimes it just catches up in me. love & ghost gets caught up in us like wind & birds trapped in a sheet just the same. & my friends is some birds, some chicken-head muhfuckas who i would legit stomp a nigga for, do you feel me? when they buried my nigga i put on my timbs walked into that hot august tried to beat his name out the dirt. i beat the earth like a nigga. i threw hands at the earth like a punk muhfucka & the ground chuckled, said my nigga. what is you doing! you can't hear the wind drunk off the kindred lent? can you hear that great roll from way off like a big nigga laughing in an alley! how your dead auntie laugh when she see you still ain't grew into that big-ass head! like your real friend laugh when you still the same ugly as yesterday! same ugly as always! same ugly as their last life!